VOLTRON: Legendary Defenders

[BeastieRunner]

Lance went from my least favorite to almost nudging Keith out.

His arc has been amazing.

Made my daughter cry.

[Personamanx]

I very much enjoyed the final season. The finale didn't exactly wow me, but I just think the direction they went in was a hard sell. I'm going to miss the show.

[The Big G]

I feel like if they had split this season into two season and added more to them I think i would be fully satisfied.

[ZeroBG82]

Just finished this up. Bittersweet. It was good, but a lot of the conclusion was pretty heavily telegraphed in advance. That said, I liked a lot of what they did here.

spoilers:

They way they brought back so many familiar faces to show how being touched by our heroes altered the course of so many lives was quite nice, even if it did make the ending pretty obvious. Lance and Allura were a nice, understated touch throughout the season. Made their ending felt earned without being super in your face about their relationship. And Omega Voltron, or whatever we're going to end up calling it, was fantastic. Shades of Gurren Lagann. LOL. Did anybody else cheer when kid-Lotor rejected Honerva? That was such a great moment, letting the child see past selfishness and reject illusion in favor of reality. Kind of a nice hero beat for Lotor to go out on. Zarkon and Honerva both get somewhat redemptive endings, in their own way. And they still avoided the cliche of having her just be mind controlled by some external evil, mostly. Though they never really get into "the entity" as much as they probably could have, it's clear that Honerva is making these choices of her own misguided will in the end. The epilogue bit was fun. Vehicle Voltron! Sort of. And Chip! Hunk's ending was my favorite. Diplomacy by food. Mmmm. And kudos to the creators for finally doing what they failed when they did Legend of Korra, and getting a same sex kiss on tv. Nice to see Shiro get a happy ending. Honestly, my biggest disappointment was just that they didn't make Keith/Acxa canon. And I figure if that's my biggest complaint, they must have been mostly successful.

end of spoilers

Sad to see this one go, but it was consistently one of the best animated shows of the last 20 years.

[Kusanagi]

Got a little teary eyed at the end. Amazing series, from beginning to end.

The one conclusion I got is I absolutely need to binge the entirety of this series in short order, as there were so many call backs I couldn't appreciate them all.

[Basara]

Ok, the creators finally managed to deus ex machina'ed me out!

Dang it, what a let down! It was absolutely bat guano crazy to pull making the Atlas into a transforming mech out of thin air last season, but this season just took the cake!

We knew that the universe would depend upon Voltron to save it, and that simply didn't happen! Instead, spoilers:

it was a crazy mismatch of Voltron and the Atlas! Deus Ex Machina strikes again! WOO!

end of spoilers

There's only so many times I can swallow "Oh no, a situation we can't overcome. Let's come together through our bond and do something impossible AGAIN!" UGH! I won't spoil it, but let's just say, the bat guano crazy stuff gets cranked to 1,111!

I'm all for happy endings, but holy cheese, did this ending lay it on THICK!

It's not to say there weren't bright moments:

Colleen Holt can actually be pretty scary. Being a parent enough to actually ground a freaking Paladin of Voltron as about as boss as they come (and Katy did deserve to be grounded, admit it).

I did like how they ended Lance and Allura's story. Sometimes people don't always get what they want. It's life.

Lance and Keith finally bonding fully and becoming best friends was nice.

Lance's date with Allura. Well done.

The episode where the Voltron team has to find out what happened on Olkaria was pretty sweet in its execution.

Lotar once again seducing Allura into doing what he wanted. I screamed, "Allura, you idiot!" when it happened, but it made sense. Lotar's always been a smooth talker.

Guest teacher Lance. Loved it.

These were all examples of the great character moments like we've had throughout the series. But that all got shoved aside because the creators had to raise the stakes impossibly high so that they could create a spectacle that looked pretty, but felt so wrong with everything that had come before.

When they did this with Avatar: The Last Airbender so that Aang could win without killing due to a new technique, it at least was the last episode, and while that felt wrong, everything else was so right.

Doing 7 episodes of it? I just have to shake my head. Well, endings are tough. This could have been so much more than it was. I'm disappointed how it ended.

Overall, I did enjoy this series. It took what had been done before and made the focus the team rather than the mech. Not many series do that. Typically, the focus is the opposite. I'm glad this wasn't the case in this series. Shiro started off as my favorite Paladin, but quickly got overshadowed by Lance. Really, all the Paladins were great characters, which wasn't the case in the original series. Also, the villains were pretty great, especially Sendak. Man, what a crafty bugger he was. He was awesome every time he showed up.

The last 7 episodes aside, this series was a blast! I wish these guys knew how to end series, but they really can't do anything other than the pull yet power outta my butt to fix everything ending. Too bad.

[Hypestyle]

how many versions of the Voltron show have come out since the 1980s show? I've never seen this yet.

[ZeroBG82]

There's only so many times I can swallow "Oh no, a situation we can't overcome. Let's come together through our bond and do something impossible AGAIN!" UGH! I won't spoil it, but let's just say, the bat guano crazy stuff gets cranked to 1,111!

This is a staple of the mecha genre. Commonplace. Also, it's built into the very fabric of the premise, and has been a recurring theme for how many season now? True, they turned the amp all the way up for their swan song, but I think if you're going to scream about it now, you've pretty much left the target audience behind.

Also, and again speaking as a mecha fan, some of the nods here are simply amazing. The repeated Gurren Lagann references in the last battle sequences had me rolling on the floor. And they even found a way to go bigger than GurLag's conclusion, which I honestly wouldn't have thought possible.

It's stylistic, but it hit the spot for this viewer.

[Basara]

This is a staple of the mecha genre. Commonplace. Also, it's built into the very fabric of the premise, and has been a recurring theme for how many season now? True, they turned the amp all the way up for their swan song, but I think if you're going to scream about it now, you've pretty much left the target audience behind.

A certain amount of it I can excuse. Overloading on it and basing your entire series finale on it? Nope, that's extremely sloppy writing. They ended three series this way now. I now know that they will never change from this style.

Also, and again speaking as a mecha fan, some of the nods here are simply amazing. The repeated Gurren Lagann references in the last battle sequences had me rolling on the floor. And they even found a way to go bigger than GurLag's conclusion, which I honestly wouldn't have thought possible.

It's stylistic, but it hit the spot for this viewer.

And that's the major issue. Gurren Lagaan was a spoof of the mecha genre. It was supposed to be bat guano crazy because it was from the very beginning. To shift from making an epic mecha series into something that outdid Gurren Lagann in its finale in the bat guano crazy aspect was utterly mystifying to me. It looked really, really pretty, but that level of craziness just completely took me out of the story, especially when spoilers:

Allura and Honerva somehow restore all of freaking reality. Sorry, good feelings cannot heal massive destruction of that magnitude and telling a story that good feelings can do this is the height of stupidity.

end of spoilers

But hey, it worked for you. I'm glad you liked it.

[Cyke]

The Deus Ex Machina would often take me out of the show. Not just the finale, but throughout the seasons themselves. But the original Voltron also had a near infinite amount of powers that don't make a lick of sense either (well, Go-Lion was a god, and the reboot is a hybrid of Go-Lion and Voltron). At a certain point it becomes part of the show -- even the Atlus-Voltron's rocket jetpack has no real aesthetic link to either side of the robot. The only way I get around it is by treating it like Star Trek technobabble; the Deus ex machina is still secondary to the character choices being made, like Allura finding the good in Honerva.

[Kusanagi]

how many versions of the Voltron show have come out since the 1980s show? I've never seen this yet.

2-3? I think. I know there was at least one failed try of a saturday cartoon, and maybe one or two others (at least in the US can't speak for Japan). This is the only one with any sort of longevity.

[Jokerz79]

how many versions of the Voltron show have come out since the 1980s show? I've never seen this yet.

Voltron Vehicles version after the Lions, Voltron Force, the 3D animation Show, and this one are the only ones I know of.

[Shriveling_memo]

The ending of the show kind of reminded me of Gurren laggen. Great ending to a show though.